Eric Adams, one of the leading candidates for mayor of New York City, earned the endorsement of one of the largest Orthodox voting blocs in Brooklyn on Wednesday, solidifying his frontrunner status in the June 22 mayoral primary.
The political leaders of a portion of Brooklyn’s Satmar Hasidic community led by Rabbi Aaron Teitelbaum from Kiryas Joel announced after midnight that Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, was their first choice for mayor under the new ranked-choice voting system. The decision came following a meeting between Adams and their leadership.
In an ad expected to run in Der Blatt, a community newspaper in Yiddish, the group described Adams as a reliable friend who has stood with the community over the years. “These are not new friends, these are old friends,” Adams said in a video released by the campaign on Wednesday. “Today receiving their endorsement, this is saying to everyone in the city that those who are elected and stood with us, we want to stan
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Another Orthodox news site took a different approach this week: JDN, an Israeli site, published an article before a large wedding about the secrecy involved in its planning, then replaced the article with another version that said the affair would be small and in keeping with COVID rules.
Photos and video from the wedding held Monday in Brooklynâs Borough Park neighborhood made clear that the first version of the story was accurate.Â
They show that hundreds, if not thousands, of guests packed into the main synagogue of one faction of Bobov Hasidism on Monday night to celebrate the wedding of the youngest son of Rabbi Ben Zion Halberstam, the grand rabbi of the sect. Videos circulated the next day over WhatsApp showed a packed wedding hall with thousands of people and no masks in sight. Large tapestries with the words âmazel tovâ were hung from a wall to cover windows into the hall.